Christopher Merrill

Poet, writer, translator, professor, and former director of the International Writing Program. My views ≠ The University of Iowa.

[Christopher Merrill @CLMerrill]

On the Road to Lviv, my book-length poetic meditation on Adam Zagajewski, cultural diplomacy, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is now available @arrowsmithpress.

[Christopher Merrill @CLMerrill]

Word.

[Laura Rozen @lrozen]

Rubio demonization of USAID is pretty nauseating.

[caroline @houseunclaimed]

@ChrisVanHollen Here are the four young women kidnapped at gunpoint.

[Senator Chris Van Hollen @ChrisVanHollen]

Yesterday, the IDF seized 4 students from their homes in the West Bank, including 20-year-old American, Sama Safi.

The Israeli govt didn’t tell her family or the U.S. Embassy where or why she was being taken & is holding her without charges.

America must secure her release NOW.

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Trump, Musk and Rubio slashed aid and scoffed that it was woke nonsense. Now they're seeing that it not only saved one life every 10 seconds but also protected us from diseases like Ebola. Their actions constituted a security failure as well as a moral one.
More broadly, their fecklessness contrasts with the courage and humanity of doctors and aid workers in Congo and Uganda, lacking adequate PPE but still risking the virus to care for fellow humans.
Trump, Musk and Rubio might learn something from them. https://t.co/kPKj7fqJFZ

[Christopher Merrill @CLMerrill]

Insane.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Trump: That's where Martin Luther King made his great speech with a million people. I had the same amount of people. They said he had a million people and I had 25,000 people. I had more people.

[Christopher Merrill @CLMerrill]

Word.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

of all the pernicious things that have happened over the past few years I think the effective rebranding of January 6 into an event in which the rioters were the ones who were wronged may best symbolize how bad our politics have become.

[Christopher Merrill @CLMerrill]

What a pig.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Trump attacking Kaitlan Collins: CNN's a very corrupt organization, with a corrupt reporter standing right there, never smiles. Young, beautiful woman, never smiles. I never see a smile on her face. I see her standing with such hatred in her eyes.

[Christopher Merrill @CLMerrill]

Idiot.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Trump: I just had this done. *holds up chart comparing reflecting pool to buildings*

[Christopher Merrill @CLMerrill]

Oh, he's so funny. What a jerk.

[Acyn @Acyn]

McBride: I assume you are aware that Greenland is part of Denmark?

Rubio: For now.

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

Rubio once again complains US-led negotiations between Ukraine and Russia were "unfruitful":

"We invested tremendous amount of high-level time in that conflict over last year. Neither side is prepared to make concessions necessary to reach agreement."

Once again, it is necessary to point out the obvious: when you have a nation trying to murder its neighbors to steal their land, and people just trying to survive, there is no middle ground.

Ukrainians, as the victims of this unprovoked attack, cannot just agree to die under Russian occupation, rot in FSB torture chambers, and be thrown into unmarked mass graves to never be found.

We simply want to live. There is zero room for concessions. As for Russia, they can be forced to stop killing us.

You could bring them to that breaking point much faster than we can do without you, if you finally stopped this disgusting bothsidesism, stopped endless sanctions waivers, seized their shadow fleet, and armed Ukraine to the teeth.

[Ben Mullin @BenMullin]

Scott Pelley just issued a statement on Bari's remarks this morning:

[Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) @speechboy71]

Earlier this week, Will Smith and I released a new Stimson Center report on the war in Iran as part of the "Is War Worth It?" project.

We examined the stated US objectives, whether the US achieved them, and the costs (direct and indirect) of the conflict.

Our conclusion: the Iran War is worse than a failure. It's a strategic calamity with no notable achievements and potentially trillions in direct and indirect costs to the US and global economy.

Iran’s nuclear capacity is broadly unchanged, its missile force largely intact, its hard-liners empowered, its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz enhanced, and U.S. munitions stockpiles depleted.

How did we come to that conclusion?

We actually took into account how the Trump administration publicly tried to justify the war -- and then took a deep dive look at the costs of the war. https://t.co/yR28eZwbnT

[Greta Berlin @Truegreta]

I stood at this pool, at both monuments and saw both reflections…
He’s a God damn idiot, as are the fools that support him. The “Reflection Pool” wasn’t designed by American architect Henry Bacon a hundred years ago to look like a swimming pool. It’s designed to have a darkened characteristics that has reflective qualities to reflect the monuments.
That way, the Washington Monument is reflective to you when at the Lincoln Memorial, and when at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial is reflective to you.
It’s designed to enhance the grandeur of monuments, create an illusion of reflection, and inclusion of expansive space of unity.
He’s a tacky vulgar person that vulgarizes everything he touches. America isn’t becoming great, it’s becoming vulgar.

Credit - Mathew Reed

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

So let me get this straight.

Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom.

Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land.

Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan.

Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted.

And I know: “But what about your paintings, Hunter?”

Please.

[Scott Nover @ScottNover]

"60 Minutes" staffers past and present are outraged about Scott Pelley's firing.

[Dylan Byers @DylanByers]

New statement from Scott Pelley:

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

The waste is heartbreaking.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.

Scott Pelley

[Jim Sciutto @jimsciutto]

Pay attention to Russia’s expanding missile attacks on Ukraine and how they are deliberately timed to cutbacks in U.S. air defense support.

[Pete Buttigieg @PeteButtigieg]

I am not making this up: Secretary Rubio actually sat before Congress today and said “the war is over.”

It’s a bizarre lie to tell when Americans know there’s obviously a war underway - not just from seeing it on screens, but from paying its costs every day at home.

Leaders with this little respect for the American people have no business in office.

[Rep. Melanie Stansbury @Rep_Stansbury]

Todd, Kash

You’re next.

—Signed @OversightDems

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

DEAN: You're under oath. When will you comply with the law and release all the Epstein files?

BLANCHE: We have complied with the law

DEAN: There are 3 million more documents. And you know what you said to me? 'They include another guy named Epstein.' Nobody is buying it

*the time of the gentlelady has expired*

DEAN: I beg your pardon? How do I get cut off 2 minutes into this? What is true is that the president has lied about being on Epstein's plane, and the unredacted files prove that. There's a lot in here. It's all covered up.